Wimmen’s Comix Show Review at the Women’s Media Center

My research is featured in a great post by Emily Wilson at the Women’s Media Center blog!

Robbins also offered support to Samantha Meier, a writer and editor on gender issues at PolicyMic. When starting work on her Harvard thesis, Twisted Sisters: Women’s Comix and Cultural Action, Meier noticed that Robbins’ name kept coming up and contacted her through her website. She got an email back 10 minutes later.

Meier’s own fascination with comics came from her hatred of the Cathy strip.

“She was always stressing out about her weight and her boyfriend or not having a boyfriend, and I thought growing up this was what my life would be,” Meier said.

This led to Meier thinking about becoming a cartoonist herself so she could “create a character for thirteen-year-old girls who didn’t suck.” That didn’t happen, but she became a huge fan of the underground comics of the 1960s and 70s, and knew she wanted to explore that further for her thesis. When she found Wimmen’s Comix, she was hooked, she says. Now working on turning her thesis into a book, Meier flew out to attend the opening of the show in San Francisco.

“I think it’s helpful in raising the profile of these artists, who are well known in comic circles, but not as well known in other circles,” she said. “The library wants to assemble a full run of the comic, which is hugely important for researchers.”

Read the rest of the article here. For the record, my love/hate relationship with Cathy didn’t inspire me to become a cartoonist (and I admire Cathy Guisewite for having an incredibly long career in the world of syndicated comic strips), but it did cause me to never want to read the word “AAAAAAACK!” again.